


An Eye for An Eye

by godcomplexfics (godtiercomplex)



Series: The World Keeps Turning On Its Axis [5]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Blindness, Drunk Sex, Eye Trauma, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-09
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 03:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3712588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtiercomplex/pseuds/godcomplexfics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s blood on Nalin's hands now, and while he’s killed the monster of his own making, he is still uneasy. The completely unabridged truth of that week when Akmal died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lamentation

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during 1971 from the time when Nalin kills Akmal until the time when he comes back to life. 
> 
> Akmal Farooq was Aahan Roy up until he became Pakistan, hope for the former Indian Muslims.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nalin realizes afterwards just how heavy regret feels.

 

His hand is steady even as he looks into those green eyes he used to know so well. Emran’s words echo in his head, and he holds it close to keep his sanity. Aahan has fallen down, and Nalin has his gun to his head and all he needs to do is pull the trigger to end this. He wonders how they must look to outsiders. Do they even register that they are not just two humans engaged in a life-or-death battle?

They don’t know the history, and Nalin knows he could never explain it in a thousand years. Words cannot fully capture his emotions, so he gives up trying, turning off his head, and focusing on the warm metal in his hand.

“It always comes to this, doesn’t it?” Aahan’s voice, no, Pakistan’s voice is steady, eyes clear as they stare up at him.

“After what you did to Emran, how can you even consider yourself human?” _How can you look up at me as if I’m in the wrong? As if you have not started this, as if you do not always start this?_

“You are the last person who should say that to me. After what I suffered through--.”

“I will own up to my mistakes,” Nalin interrupts him, not wanting to hear of his pain when Emran is fighting for his freedom. “You can’t be allowed to continue on like this.”

He owes Emran this. He should have stopped it long before now.

He pulls the trigger, once, twice. Head, and then heart. Pakistan dies on the battlefield, bleeding out, and body a mess of gore. Nalin cannot move. He cannot lower the gun, and he cannot move.

_I am right, I am right, I am right._

He can’t lower his arm, and it is Emran who lowers it for him. It is Emran’s soldiers who carry Pakistan away. He almost protests, before realizing that he doesn’t know why. This is the child who abandoned him, he should feel nothing.

Emran takes the gun from him, and he realizes his uniform is covered in blood. But with this done he cannot help but feel that he owes nothing else to Emran. He retreats, never able to stomach the smell of so much death after what Arthur put him through. He will fight if he must, but he doesn’t like to kill. The tattoos on his body say otherwise, but he takes one step forward, and another until he is breathing in air that is not death.

 

He doesn’t ask what happens to Pakistan, distancing himself as he puts up a brave front. He thanks Ivan for his help, and tries not to let on how much he is hurting. He never expected it to mean anything to him. It’s just Pakistan. It’s always only just been him, he accepted that they would be enemies long ago, he doesn’t understand why he is has become emotional over it all.

He just never thought that he would be the one to put an end to him. Until Emran had demanded that he stop him, he had been content to ignore the child that abandoned him.

"...my friend?" Ivan says and he knows he should be paying attention to the report on what happened in the bay, but he keeps on seeing green eyes staring up at him, and he keeps on feeling the gunshot echoing in his ears. In all his years alive, he has never directly killed someone who meant so much to him once upon a time. His hands shake and his heart hurts and Aahan is still dead two days later. Word would have come by now, and he has never been sure of Aahan's existence but can a nation who forced its way into the world come back to life? He feels sick, and excuses himself from Ivan.

"I'm still a bit tired from the war," he says.

"I will come tomorrow then," Ivan says when he lets him out. And he has been at his house each day now since he returned from the front and he realizes that Ivan is worried about him. He almost asks him if he knows what it's like to have continuously damaged your family in such a way that the same mistakes are repeated time and time again. He feels horrible.

He does not ask. He doesn't tell Ivan to not show up either.

 

He's with Emran at a quick emergency meeting. He's just there to offer support and is surprised to see Yao there as well. There is no Pakistan and the leaders do everything, ending with saying that once he has woken up they will have him sign the papers.

It's been three days since he pulled the trigger and his brother has still not woken up. Yao's eyes look red and he wonders why he cares so much.

He can't focus on anything and so steps out to smoke. He tries to be surprised when Yao follows him. The crazed look from decades ago is gone, and now he is just Yao. He is just Yao and so Nalin allows the punch to his face. He doesn't allow the second one.

"If there's something you would like to say to me, please use your words."

"You destroyed him," Yao says, "He'll never see again." He covers his face, and Nalin knows that he has no right to ask if he's woken up yet, if he's moved, if he's shown any signs of life. Yao's shoulders shake and he cannot tell if he's crying or screaming or if he'll try to hit him again. But as they are now, he is so much stronger than Yao.

"Can he see out of the other eye?" That is the wrong thing to ask and he knows it even as Yao glares at him.

"What is wrong with you?" Yao asks, "He is your brother--!"

"Do you see Emran?" He looked better than at the start of the year, but it will be a long time before he looks healthy once more. "He is also my brother. I could not stand by any longer. Even if all of it wasn't his direct doing, he must take the punishment for what he did do." He sounds like he's reading from a script, and Yao must sense it too. This is what happens after you live near and fight against and with someone for as long as they have done. But now, there is Pakistan between them and Yao chooses him as he shakes his head.

"There had to have been another way to end this."

"He had to be stopped. He attacked me first," Nalin reminds him, "He had to be stopped."

 

_I am right. I am right. I am right._

 

He is regretful and resentful by his fourth glass, and yet Ivan shows no signs that the alcohol has impacted him at all. Nalin can't be bothered to focus on sitting upright and falls on his couch. Ivan remains seated at the opposite end, even as Nalin's head hits his thigh. It's the fingers pressing against his scalp, that break the wall he has built up around his heart.

He starts crying, trembles in this house which he brought after Pakistan's departure and which doesn't hold the memories of any of his other houses. But even still, he cannot help but feel haunted by his brother. Haunted by his mother. Haunted and hated and the punch to his face just had not been enough to break him but Ivan's gentle and hesitant touch is and he feels defeated.

He cries with his arm over his face and tries not to relive the battlefield over and over again. But it is impossible and his life is a collection of mistakes and things he wants to take back but can't.

_He is wrong._

He doesn't realize that he's said it all out loud, spilling his secrets to this man who will use them in the worse way until Ivan sighs.

"You were not wrong. You did what you had to in order to protect what matters."

Ivan's voice is steady and his voice is firm. But what does Ivan really know?

"What do you know?" His voice sounds abused from his crying, and he stares up at Ivan, almost wanting to blame him for this, for enabling him, but knowing if it hasn't been Ivan he would have found someone else.

"I know you," Ivan says, "I know this story well."

Nalin can't help but laugh because his life has come full circle and he has white men once more acting like they know him. He grows angry and sits back up.

"You think you know me," he corrects him.

"I have been by your side all this while," Ivan says, "I know you."

He can't help the bitter laugh. He knows he should be nicer, he knows he owes so much to Ivan's help, he knows this but Aahan, Pakistan is dead. He knows he has no one to blame but himself but he can't stand to listen to another word from Ivan. He's unsteady on his feet but he gets up.

"Please leave."

"I can't leave you like this, comrade," Ivan touches his hand.

"You can leave me, friend." And he's mocking him openly where he only did it secretly before. "What I need is something you cannot help me with." As soon as Ivan has left, he knows what he will do. He should have done it sooner--.

"I will help you, as we are friends."

He doesn't look back at him, but keeps his tone cold, having already shown enough weakness in front of him for one day. "I do not need a friend."

"What do you need?"

He tells him, as vulgarly as he can make it, framing it in the worse way possible. He expects Ivan to let go of his hand in disgust. But, he keeps holding his hand, and says he can do it.

He remains surprised at Ivan until he's naked in his bed. Only then does he stop to consider that it is real. Only then does he start to question what he's doing but then Ivan touches his chest and pulls him down into the kind of kiss he needs. When Ivan's hand brushes against the scar of the cut that ended his life in 1858 he breaks the kiss and holds his hands down. He cannot afford to be drawn back to that day when he woke up to find that Aahan had been taken away from him.

He kisses him and Ivan keeps his hands to himself and he's able to get out of his head. He's able to stop thinking about what he regrets and focuses on the man underneath twisting his hands in Nalin's sheets as he struggles to maintain his control. He focuses on the bitter taste against his tongue and how wide his mouth has stretched out around Ivan's cock. He focuses on taking Ivan apart until he’s turned his face against Nalin’s pillow and chokes out harsh breathes. He feels grim satisfaction as he presses his way inside him, bending down to kiss him, almost mocking him with gentleness.

And Ivan lets him, takes all of it, and doesn’t touch him but kisses him back harder, moves his hips along with his thrusts. Ivan refuses to just be an anonymous stranger Nalin’s picked up, refuses to back down from his own interest in Nalin, acting as twisted as Nalin has suspected for a while his feelings must be.

He means to pull out, but Ivan doesn’t let him, and he ends up spilling inside of him, and feeling a twist in his gut as he does so. He didn’t mean for this to happen. Even if it were inevitable, and they would have done this in the future, it should have been gentler than this, he should have--.

“It’s alright to cry. You were right, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hard choice to make,” Ivan mutters, and he sounds wiped out.

Nalin knows he means Aahan’s death, and he knows that he is in mourning. He realizes that he is heartbroken, and he ends up crying again in his bed.

 

It is December 23rd when he gets a phone call from an aide that the surrender is official. That means of course, that Aahan is awake. That he is alive.

Nalin isn’t sure how to process this information, but Ivan has not left his house in two days and Christmas is right around the corner, and he can’t just rush out to meet the man he killed.

He doesn’t go in until December 27th, and it’s with the most flimsy of excuses. Nalin doesn’t care, he just wants to confirm with his own eyes that he has not been tricked.

Aahan is a wreck. His head is covered in bandages, miles of white cloth. His skin is paler, his body shakes, and yet the one green eye he can see looks as clear as ever. Yao starts to say something, but Aahan speaks first. His words are a slur, and he butchers their shared tongue.

“Go drink cow piss, shrimpdick!”

He stares at him, and he sighs, and he feels like the world just settled back how it should be. He doesn’t ever want things to go this far again, but--.

“Shrimpdick? It is not that much smaller than your own. Honestly, manners, Pakistan.”


	2. Heartbreak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yao’s heart breaks and he has never felt more useless.

Yao gets the news that Akmal is dead, on the same day he gets the news that the war is over. He expected to hear that it was the former East Pakistan that did his young friend in. He is readying his bags to hurry to Akmal when he hears that it was not the new freed nation, that it was Nalin who delivered that final blow. He is in Pakistan’s capital when his body is returned. The Pakistani government has never dealt with a dead nation before. They fear for what it means for their own stability. He wants to reassure them that they will be alright, but he cannot say the same for Akmal. He is more than just their representation, a man with feelings all of his own, with wishes and dreams all of his own, and now he has been killed.

Yao knows that sometimes the humans that they are supposed to embody act against what they would like, and he knows that he doesn’t know the full story. But, Akmal should not be dead. Nalin had no right to take his hatred this far.

He is finally allowed to see him, and he feels his heart break. They have cleaned the mud of the battlefield from him, and bandaged him up. There is no blood to stain the white clothes, and there is no voice to greet him and call him friend.

Akmal’s people mourn him, and he mourns with them. He can’t bring himself to leave Akmal’s hospital room, and there is no need for him to.

He’s there when they change the bandages, and has to watch as still there is no sign of life. He cannot bring himself to look away at the absolute destruction that Nalin has left in his wake. Akmal will never see again out of his left eye most likely, and he cannot help but feel sorry that those green eyes will never look forward again. It is this realization that makes him cry, body shaking in his chair as he covers his face and gives in to the ache in his heart.

 

He goes to an emergency session with the Pakistani leaders, trying to provide guidance in their time of need. He hadn’t wanted to leave Akmal’s side. He hasn’t been able to stop crying since the floodgates opened last night. There isn’t much to be done with Akmal still dead. Bangladesh is quiet, body almost fragile in his newfound freedom. Nalin is there to lend his brother support, and Yao rages that he could so easily choose between his siblings.

He follows him when Nalin goes out to smoke, and ends up punching him in the face. His knuckles ache, and he doesn’t have the power of even a few decades ago when he could afford to deliver the full strength of his anger to his enemies. Because that is what Nalin has become, now. He has chosen his side in history, as he has always, constantly, consistently done for his own satisfaction.

Nalin stops his second punch.

"If there's something you would like to say to me, please use your words."

"You destroyed him," Yao says, "He'll never see again." His voice breaks and he has to cover his face as he cries again, unable to care if Nalin can see him or not. Nalin has no right to witness this, but he has done worse in front of this man.

"Can he see out of the other eye?"

"What is wrong with you?" Yao asks, ready to hit him again, needing to hit him again. "He is your brother--!"

"Do you see Emran?" Nalin’s voice is low, and Yao remembers how Bangladesh looked in the meeting, and about how rarely he has ever had dealings with him. He remembers the ‘truth’ coming out from India’s hands, and he clenches his fists. "He is also my brother. I could not stand by any longer. Even if all of it wasn't his direct doing, he must take the punishment for what he did do."

Nalin’s voice is practiced and that gives him away. Yao almost asks if he’s regretting his choice, before remembering the clean shots, and that the last thing Akmal had to have seen was Nalin’s face, and he is so angry once more that he says nothing on the subject of Nalin’s pain. He doesn’t deserve to share in the pain of those who care about Akmal.

"There had to have been another way to end this."

"He had to be stopped. He attacked me first.” Nalin repeats himself before going back inside, and leaving Yao with all of his pain.

 

America visits and Yao dries his eyes. It almost feels like he’s been crying for hours, and when he looks at how long the sun is in the sky, he realizes he has been.

“How is he?” America almost looks apologetic, and Yao cannot help but shake his head.

“If you had just left well enough alone, then Russia would not have provided so much support to India. You need to stop meddling in the affairs of my continent. Aren’t you causing us enough harm?”

“I’m just trying to keep the peace--.”

“You have failed,” he stressed out. He wrapped his arms around himself to keep from falling apart in front of America. Nalin could not think worse or better of him, but America was someone who needed more care and consideration. “Akmal is dead, you are no true friend of his for enabling all of this. Setting him up to fight in your proxy wars, you are no more a hero than I am.”

America doesn’t say anything, fingers tight in his fists, and Yao feels validated.

“I never wanted things to turn out this way.” America says. Yao can see himself already distancing himself, thinking about how he will have to return to another battlefield all of his own. He doesn’t care about Akmal in a way that truly means anything.

 

He is all cried out, years of tears having come and gone, when Akmal stirs. The first time, he calls Yao a ghost, and the third time he calls him beautiful.

The fifth time, he stays awake, and Yao explains the situation once more.

“You were dead, friend,” Yao says, “I am sorry I could not help. My hands were tied.” He doesn’t mention that he has not left his side since he got the news, fearing that he will go to sleep once more.

“It is fine,” Akmal says, sounding more alert this time around, “I will just have to be more careful in the future. He was more ready than I imagined.”

“It would be better if you didn’t fight him.” He knows he cannot demand that they cease fighting, because knows what it is like to hate someone so much. But he could not imagine killing Siuchun and he can not imagine how Nalin pulled the trigger so damn easily. “But yes, in the future take care.”

“I ain’t got much of a choice. I can’t fucking see.”

“Yes, he blew off half your face.”

“Who? Oh.” Akmal falls silent, thinking over that. Yao kisses his cheek before calling the nurses again.

“What was that for?” Akmal asks as he tracks him with his lone green eye.

“A kiss doesn’t need to be for anything.” It’s just his way of being completely thankful that Akmal has come back to him. “But you are late waking up, Akmal. Welcome back.”

He wonders if he’s blushing underneath the bandages, but all he does is close his eye and fall asleep once more.

Yao is so unbelievably thankful that his dear boy has returned to him.

 

His boss refuses to allow him to linger in Pakistan once Akmal has been reported alive and functional, so he ends up back home, stuck doing paperwork and the other tasks that come with being China while Akmal recovers without him.

When they meet up two weeks after his release, Akmal is steady on his feet. His left eye is hidden behind an eyepatch, and when pressed on it, he shrugs and says that it hasn’t grown back yet.

Yao realizes that this is Akmal’s punishment, but he can’t bring himself to mind it nor does Akmal overly much.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Siuchun = Hong Kong as per Shilly's suggestion.
> 
> Akmal loses the sight in his left eye until he agrees to acknowledge Bangladesh.


End file.
